Thanksgiving

I am thankful for a boat ton of things. I have great friends, a job that I enjoy where I get to interact with a bunch of awesome people.

While I would love to focus on everything, for today(and everyday), I am most thankful for my family. I have two amazing children and a wonderful wife.

The wonderfulness that is my family can be summed up with a short story from today. I hunt, my family is not too keen on the whole hunting thing. My son loves nature and animals, and other than crows, doesn't want anything dead. My wife also has a difficult time with me killing something. Today on the way home from my parents, we drive by where I hunt. They agreed to let me grab my gun, and sit in the car in a field, while I sat on the bumper waiting to kill Bambi's dad. I didn't, but as they say it was the thought that counts. They were willing to spend 40 minutes "hunting" with me, because that's how great they are.

Never hug a Panda

Some people are AWESOME!.

What do you think the thought process was for this guy? Wakes up in the morning. Realizes that in a country with a billion people, he can't find one person to love him. So he decides that he would go to the one place where he can see creatures sadder than him, a zoo. Then he walks by the Panda pen, and sees cute and cuddly Yang Yang. He thinks maybe some good old fashion Panda spooning will put me in a better mood. So he hops over the fence, throws open his arms, and gets mauled.

Life lesson learned. No matter how sad of an existence you have, Never Hug a Panda.

Checks....Whats up with that?

So I was in line at Fleet Farm, waiting to claim my free tiny knife (don't ask). When I picked what appeared to be the shortest line. (which always ends up being the line that takes the longest) The guy in front of me had two items, and one of them was scanned already when I got in line behind him. After the second item was scanned, I saw him pull out his checkbook. It seemed like a relic, it was like he was talking on a Zack Morris Cell phone.


After what seemed like forever, the clerk gets the check, and looks at it like he filled it out in French. He literally stared at it, looked at the guy, looked at the check, and called over his manager over. The manager had to come over and show the clerk how to enter a check into the system.

Ridiculus.

Secret Santa

As Christmas draws closer, so does the day when I will need to fill out my Secret Santa list at work. I enjoy asking for ridiculus things, one because it would be awesome if I actually got it, and B because I think Secret Santa in general is ridiculus.

Here are some previous items I have asked for and recieved:
Movie Poster from Bio Dome
Pink Unicorn
$5 worth of Dimes
Captain Planet T-Shirt

Here are some I have asked for and not recieved:
Signed Cast picture from the Muppets
Life Sized Poster of Bruce Campbell
ThunderCats Lunch Box with Thermos


Here are some ideas that I have for this year:
Movie Poster from the Dark Crystal
Gumby
An original peice of art from you, framed, and signed
A bust of Art Garfunkel
Muppet Babies Lunch Box with Thermos

Thoughts? Suggestions?

Movie Pitch

So I continue to kick around what I am going to base my screen play on so I can cross that item off of my 30x30 list. I have one script started, but have had another idea pop into my head. I thought I would run it by you kids to see what you think.

It will be done in a mockumentary style. Similar to Christopher Guest movies such as "Best in Show". The basis is a documentarian sets out to show the protesters on both sides of an issue. It starts out as any documentary would, focusing in on one set of protesters. The pace picks up on the second day when the focus switches to the the protesters on the other side. The documentarian realizes that a person that was in the opposite crowd the first day, is now in the crowd he is filming that day. Which is when his focus switches to strictly this individual. We find out that this person is addicted to protesting. He doesn't seem to have any loyalties to an issue. He just likes to stand around with a bunch of people and yell things. We follow him from day to day, each one a new protest more ridiculous then the next.

I just find the idea of someone who just likes to protest things, hilariously funny.

Simple Things

I love cookies dunked in milk.

Updates

Since I don't seem to get to blog as much as I would like to these days, I thought I would put out some updates.

1. If you are keeping track at home cross # 24 off your list. I bought a snowblower on Saturday. That's right, I now own a snowblower. No idea how to use it yet, but it has six forward speeds and two in reverse.

2. I bought an Ipod Touch. With my recent raise at work, and a bonus long in coming, I decided that I wanted an Ipod Touch. It is fairly awesome. The video has great quality, and it has been easy to navigate. I haven't had time to find some games to download, but from what I have heard they have some fairly cool ones.

3. Trevor seems to be an amazingly well behaved kid at school. We had parent teacher conferences today, and his teacher let us know that Trevor is probably the best listener he has had in class in years. He is always attentive, and actively participating. Now if we can only get him to listen at home.

4. Weight loss challange 2 has started at work. I am aiming to lose 26 pounds this go round, which is ten more than last time. This time we are partnering with a local fitness center, they seem to be taking a very active roll in the contest this time, and providing a lot of resources and support. I will try and update as we go.

That is about it for now.

History

In 1863 Abraham Lincoln issued his Emancipation Proclamation.
In 1865 the states ratified the 13th Amendment to the Constitution.
In 1870 the states ratified the 15th Amendment to the Constitution.
In 1955 Rosa Parks sat down.
In 1963 Martin Luther King Jr. had a dream.
In 1965 the National Voting Rights Act was created.
In 2008 Barack Obama was elected President of the United States.

Our country has come a long way. With millions of votes cast, voters not only voted for our future, but served the memory of those that came before us and fought for equality for all people. A precedent has been set. One of change, equality, and hope.

VOTE

Ten Years Apart

I went to the State Cross Country meet today. I love Cross Country, and the State Meet brings the best teams and runners to one spot. I saw some great races today, and the weather was beautiful. This race also marked the 10th year since I ran at the state meet. I was the fifth runner for our team (finishing close to the back of the race), and from what everyone remembered we finished in the top 10.

The reason I went, along with my friend, and fellow WBHS CC team member, Andy, to the meet today was to see our High School coaches son run in his last High School CC race. First off, it was crazy to see how much he and his brother have grown over the last 10 years. It truly made me feel old.

Unfortunately today's race was eerily similar to the race I ran in 10 years ago. Aaron went into the meet as a winner of his Sectional race and conference champion, the same as did Nate Wolff (who was the #1 runner on our team). Both were coming off great seasons, and were mentioned among the possible winners (Nate was probably the favorite ten years ago, while Aaron was listed as one of the contenders to win). Both unfortunately had races that didn't live up to their own expectations, and failed to medal. Today Aaron finished 12th. He did improve on both his time and finishing place from last years race though.

Cross Country to me, is the hardest sport in High School. Over the course of 3.2 miles your mind has a lot of time to tell you that you are doing something crazy with your body. Mainly running way to fast for way to long. Also, you are running as an individual, in a team sport. Once the gun goes off, your teammates are limited in what they can do to help you. Especially in the case of Nate and Aaron. Aaron qualified as an individual, so he was running the race without a team. Nate was so far superior to anyone on the team, that after the gun sounded, none of us would be close enough to Nate again to offer any encouragement. I will never know, what caused them to have off days, but I hope that both of them will look back on their respective races with pride.

While both of them did not have the races they dreamed of, I applaud both of them for their accomplishments. While neither would probably admit this, it is very difficult to be a successful CC runner at Wittenberg-Birnamwood. Both lived in the shadow of two of Wisconsin's greatest runners, John and Cathy Easker. John ran for Wittenberg, and I would argue had the most successful post high school athletic career as a WBHS graduate. Cathy, while she did not go to WBHS, she is the Cross Country coach. While both of the were able to give Nate and especially Aaron (since he is their son) great insight in what it takes to be a top runner, it had to have added some extra pressure.

Even if you would just look at their High School CC accomplishments, they set some lofty standards to live up to. Cathy still holds the two fastest races at state by a girl in Division 2, and John holds the second fastest race at state in Division 2.

I would imagine that there are very few other runners in Nate's race 10 years ago, and Aarons race today, that were not only running against the people in the race, but were running against history. Which I imagine makes for a difficult race.